Samsung Back On Top In Q1 2016 As iPhone Growth FLATLINES

Samsung has reportedly doubled arch-rival Apple's smartphone shipping figures for 2016's first quarter, according to details released by industry analytics firm TrendForce. We should clarify of course that this is shipments, not sales, so it doesn't necessarily mean Sammy is outperforming Apple in all the ways that count.

The figures show that Samsung has upped its market share to 27.8%, a 5.7% increase from Q1 2015 and placing it in the number one ranking position worldwide. Samsung's performance is also up quarter-on-quarter from 2015's Q4 (usually a robust period for players in the market) with a total of 81 million units shipped in Q1 2016.

TrendForce analysts believe Samsung's earlier-than-usual launch of the flagship Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 edge handsets, in combination with the Samsung J-series in China, may have helped boost Samsung's overall figures; the firm expects Samsung's performance to continue to improve going further into the year.

Apple took the number two spot with a notable drop to 14.4% of the market, a decrease of 6.5% on last year's figures, however, it's important to note that the quarter does not include the period following the launch of the new iPhone SE, so shipments and sales of this new model are yet to be taken into account; they will factor into Q2 reports. LG's performance is also up on the previous year, though down from 2015's Q4.

However, this is all apparently the division of a gradually decreasing pie. It's thought the global smartphone market is now saturated, with total global shipments across brands of 292 million units down from last year's 358 million for the same period - that means it has fallen by 1.3% on Q1 2015's figures and is down 18.6% from Q4 2015. Reportedly a boost of activity off the back of 4G adoption in China and wider smartphone adoption in India may have helped prop things up, but still cannot hide a downward trend with Q1 2016 shipments inside China also dropping 27 million units (20%) from the same period in 2015 (from 148 million units down to 125 million units).

We've known tablet sales have been steadily declining for the last few years, but is it now also the turn of the smartphone? What will manufacturers turn to if the pool continues to dry up?